


architect of a whole world's nightmares

by suitablyskippy



Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, F/F, Pre-Canon, Sibling Incest, warning for an intense and deeply unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-05-19
Packaged: 2017-12-12 08:45:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/809631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/pseuds/suitablyskippy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The wind’s really loud here,” says Mukuro, and her tone is very flat, almost uncannily extremely <i>exactly</i> as though she’s trying to hide a breaking heart! “I didn’t get all of that.” Junko imagines her: underground, her snowhole, scraped out till it fit as close as a womb, eyes blank – impassive – <i>ice</i> cold! – and she’s wrapped in furs and snug in a sleeping bag – no, she’s <i>naked</i> and snug in a sleeping bag, and Junko runs one soft bare foot up one smooth bare leg and shivers at the thought. “Did you need something?”</p><p>“Thinkin bout you!” says Junko. “Thinkin bout the apocalypse.”</p><p>(Mukuro spends three years as a soldier and a missing person, and she still can't get away from Junko: but even if she could, she wouldn't.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	architect of a whole world's nightmares

**year one**

 

Her dress is slit to the waist but it hits the ground with cloth to spare, a toxic oilslick of a dress that warps every time she moves under the hot stage lights and she _moves_ : a sashay and a strut and the strike of her heels one- _two_ one- _two_ on the riveted steel catwalk, raised up high above the audience. Ugly heads on wobbly necks, craning back to see her, craning back for the slightest glimpse – the fiery trail of her ascension blazing behind her! – a shooting star, an explosion, a _supernova_! – a divinely gorgeous star soaring up to take her place in the celestial ranks, a billowing flaming ball of gas and destruction who’s got catwalk swagger even in stilettos cast from steel and Junko hits her pose at the catwalk’s jetty – suspended above the crowd and the flashes of their cameras and their desperation to be near her, to have her, to let her worth rub off on them or just, perhaps, to let _them_ rub off on _her_ – pose! – and she’s elbows, she’s sharp and angular – pose! – and hands to cheeks she curls in on herself – pose! – and she lowers her lashes and raises them, and blows a kiss – and her agent’ll hate it but the magazines’ll _love_ it, and that’s it – weight to her left, weight to her right, she turns and hits her rhythm and the cameras flash behind her and below her and her ridiculous steel heels hammer out an echo on the ridiculous steel catwalk, and it creaks, slowly, on the cables and chains that suspend it. A _goddess_! – the papers will say it – the reviewers will say it – _she’ll_ say it, she _does_ say it! 

The steps to backstage from the end of the catwalk aren’t steel. She hammers down them; the other girls huddle from her, starved shoulder sockets and eyes made up to fluoresce and dresses that hang limply from their points and corners and flat chests, and _they_ don’t shimmer in the dim pointless energy-saving backstage lights. 

“Get me a phone!” snaps Junko, and they quail. She kicks off her heels; they hit a wall and clatter. “A fucking _phone_!” and then she turns on the nearest wardrobe assistant and presses her fingers to her lips, and she dips her gaze, and she murmurs: “ _Pretty_ please? The prettiest please? _If_ you please?”

She gets the phone. 

In the backstage bustle someone tries to dress her as she’s dialling and she flips them off. There’s hectic susurration all around: the whisper of clothes falling and zips rising and girls swapping sweet deceitful tips and tricks for weight loss and lip gloss and fucking artistic directors (on top! _always_ on top), and applause from outside rattles in like noise meant for someone else so Junko rolls her eyes as she listens to the ringtone and sends her dress cascading to the floor: a shimmy of her smooth pale shoulders and wiggle of her toned tight butt and there’s a ripple and a glimmer and then it’s falling softly from her. 

“Junko?” says Mukuro. 

Junko shoves aside the sticky bottles and dripping pots and dusty glittering brushes on her make up counter and sits herself there, her back to the mirror and the lights of the mirror setting her hair – straightened, sprayed silver, long and soft and sleek – to glowing and her silver bra and silver panties shining. “Angel,” she coos, softly, and covers her mouth with her other hand so the conversation stays between the two of them. “Angel, my honey, my _darling_ – how are you?”

“I’m okay,” says Mukuro, after a moment. There’s a muffled wheezy roaring on her end of the line, tinny and distant and relentless, but Junko doesn’t bother asking because she doesn’t give a shit. “It’s – nice to hear from you?”

“And it’s lovely to hear from you! You’re _such_ a sweetie,” says Junko. “Heart in the right place, huh? Biologically _and_ emotionally – the best combination! Hey, if your heart ever slips in your chest, sis, you let me know – we’ll get it torn out and replaced. Only the best for you, sugar! My sugarplum, my sugarplum fairy!”

“Is there something you need?” says Mukuro, but the pause before she speaks is longer this time. Junko’d put it down to a lag from the message bouncing up from whatever shitty godforsaken little dump Mukuro’s holed up in to a satellite then back down to Junko’s radiant centre if Mukuro’s natural slowness of wit and general all-round intellectual ineptitude weren’t matters of public record for every member of the public she’d ever met. 

“Thinkin bout you,” says Junko, and bats her lashes at the wardrobe assistant frantically holding out her next change. “Give us a sec –” she covers the speaker and leans forward, draws her elbows primly in so her breasts push out and the halterneck knot of her bra pulls tense and strained against her neck, “– I will don these garments in an appropriate amount of time for my next walk. Please,” and she graces the coarse wide wrist of the wardrobe assistant with the delicate touch of her immaculate fingertips, “do not concern yourself on my behalf.”

“Enoshima-san –” 

“Did you fuckin _catch_ that?” snaps Junko, and digs in with the immaculate silver-painted nails of those immaculate fingertips. The wardrobe assistant opens her mouth in a silent, involuntary cry: Junko watches the pink insides of her throat quiver for a moment but it’s nothing special, and she’s seen better, and it’s a distraction, so she lets her go and snatches the clothes from her arms. “Gimme this shit, fucking _Christ_ – you there, sis?” 

“Yeah,” says Mukuro. The rushing sound on her end comes down the line like white noise but furious. “I’m in a snowhole.”

“There’s only one hole _you_ belong in, you filthy cheat! I _knew_ it – you screw them all, don’t you? All those big, strong, sweaty _killers_? Do they line up at your tent? – do they wait outside your trench? Do they form an orderly queue?”

“I never –”

“Mercenaries!” huffs Junko, spreading her next outfit across her lap, tracing the white threads in the sheer black fabric with her pinky nail. “The highest bidder gets your firepower, if he pays – I should have guessed! The highest bidder gets your _ass_ , if he pays! You’re a whore! A common whore – an _uncommon_ whore!”

“ _No_ ,” she insists, “Junko, you’ve got to believe me –” and Junko’s hardly listening as her heart doubles and grows and triples in size inside her chest – the other side of the globe and a trained killer and _frantic_! frantic for _her_! – and if her smile right now was broadcast to the country there’d be a hundred thousand coronaries up and down the length of it as a hundred thousand sweaty desperate losers became _instantly_ overwhelmed – overpowered! – by the hot and swelling radiance of her love, clear in her eyes and their pants and she presses the phone to her ear two-handed, sighs Mukuro’s name, closes her eyes ecstatically as Mukuro’s voice falters. “You’re – okay with me?”

“I fucked two different show producers last weekend,” Junko says – murmurs, as low and sultry as the perfume ad Mukuro doesn’t know she’s starring in because Mukuro probably hasn’t even seen a _television_ in the last eleven months, let alone her sister’s gorgeous, tremendous domination of its airwaves. “And I’ve never been a hypocrite.”

“Really?” says Mukuro. “I mean – did you? Do that? Really?”

Oh, she could _die_ from this! The uncertainty – the insecurity – the _neediness_ , she _needs_ her, she craves her and she’s far far _far_ too dumb to hide it! “Oh-oh!” cries Junko, and then she drops her voice and whispers, viciously, gleefully: “Would that make you _jealous_? Isn’t it terrible you can’t check? Can’t police me? Can’t _mother_ me, Muku-chan? Boy oh _boy_ , it sure sucks this didn’t occur to you _before_ you fucked off to rot in a snowhole!”

“The wind’s really loud here,” says Mukuro, and her tone is very flat, almost uncannily _exactly_ as though she’s trying to hide a breaking heart! “I didn’t get all of that.” Junko imagines her: underground, her snowhole, scraped out till it fit as close as a womb, eyes blank – impassive – _ice_ cold! – and she’s wrapped in furs and snug in a sleeping bag – no, she’s _naked_ and snug in a sleeping bag, and Junko runs one soft bare foot up one smooth bare leg and shivers at the thought. “Did you need something?”

“Thinkin bout you,” says Junko, again. “Thinkin bout the apocalypse.”

“I’m going to help you with that.” The pause she leaves is _delicious_ in its hesitation. “You know that.”

“I sure do!”

“So –” and Junko can _see_ that expression – _barely_ an expression! – eyebrows drawn slightly down and mouth creased slightly up and she’s puzzling it out, she’s worrying it out, she’s fumbling at Junko’s perfectly sleek edges looking for a seam or a foothold or an entrance – she’s _despairing_ , “– what did you call for?”

“Thinkin bout you,” says Junko, with the same beat and the same tone and the same exact casual, offhand delivery. “Thinkin bout the apocalypse.”

Mukuro is silent. The wind howls around her snowhole, shrieks, whips back and billows and screams down the line. “Okay,” she says. 

“Don’t worry your cute little head over it,” says Junko, who is feeling endlessly, infinitely generous. “Hey, look – I’m pretty naked right now, and I’m also totally on a job – catch you later, okay? Later, hun? Later, sweets?”

“Okay,” says Mukuro. 

“Love you,” says Junko. 

“Sorry?” says Mukuro, and the wind wails high and unearthly like a girl who’s woken to find her silky gorgeous locks all got shaved right off in her sleep; except Mukuro didn’t wail, when Junko did it to her. “I didn’t catch –”

“Ungrateful _bitch_ –”

“I didn’t hear you! –”

“I see through your game! – I see through your game like your game’s flayed skin and there’s a light shining bright on the other side, I see through your game like it’s a _window_ , I see through your game like it’s empty space and there’s nothing even to _see_ through –”

“Junko-chan –”

“Cut the crap,” says Junko, and she presses her hand to her mouth in case Mukuro senses the softness of her smile below the toxin of her words, “ _dollface_.” 

“It’s _not_ crap,” says Mukuro, “it’s not, I didn’t – was it important?”

“Big sis thinks _everything_ I got to say ain’t equally fuckin important?”

“ _No_ – I mean, especially – do you need something? Do you want something? Anything, I can do anything –”

Junko moves the phone from her ear to her mouth and presses a kiss to the speaker. It’s a damp, long, luxurious kiss: the phone tastes like hairspray and it’s _foul_ so she puts tongue in, runs it across the dents and waxy ridges to relish her repulsion – across the room another dumb-eyed wardrobe assistant’s picking lint from the sleeves of her plain dull black top with incomprehension in her plain dull brown eyes – and that’s how it _is_ to be a star, to be an idol – focus of a country’s dreams! architect of a whole world’s nightmares! – and Junko pulls away, with the most indecently wet smack of a sound she can manage. “This what you’re into?” she says, eyes big and wide, and puts a hand to her cheek. “Little girls and their inanimate objects? Huh?” Inanimate! – it’s still more responsive than _Mukuro_! “Huh, huh, _huh_?”

“I wasn’t –” blurts the wardrobe assistant, who’s suddenly clenching and grasping at the air like she thinks there’s something there to hide her red-faced panic, “I – _hadn’t_ –”

“ _Do_ tell,” says Junko, and then she hangs up on Mukuro and drops the phone to the counter, where it skids and rattles round the bottles and pots, and she selects her cutest laugh from her well-stocked repertory and laughs it. “Upupu – don’t _really_! I couldn’t give a smaller, drier _shit_ what I get up to in your fantasies! Could you get out, please? I have a _dress_ to wear –” she slides her hands back to the tie of her bikini, “– a _walk_ to walk –” the wardrobe assistant’s hurrying for the door, “my public’s _craving_ me!” says Junko, and the dress in her lap shimmies to the floor when she hops down and spins and claps her hands to the cool aluminium sides of the counter.

The dressing room is hot and stuffy and empty; the door swings slowly shut and the backstage noise becomes background noise. “I’ve got – what my public _needs_ ,” murmurs Junko, pausing between words to study her own flawless pout in the mirror, to refine the precise angle at which her lashes lower, to enhance the perfectly predatory relish it comes out with, low and slow and utterly, terribly, _despairingly_ hackneyed. “And I’m _going_ to deliver.”

 

**year two**

 

It’s early summer on the outskirts of Berlin; the sky is still and warm and blue from edge to edge. The stock of Mukuro’s rifle is damp with sweat where it’s spent the last half hour pressed up against her cheek but she’s been stiller for longer in places that were hotter, so she lies, like she’s been lying since she got here, stretched out on her stomach in the shadows at the edge of the roof, her breathing slow and shallow, her visor cap pulled down low across her bangs. 

The city rises up high and grey below a shimmering haze of exhaust fumes and heat. On and off, a car horn blares out above the grumble of traffic – a siren howls – an aeroplane roars distantly up and away in take-off. It’s background noise. She curls her fingers tighter round the barrel for a moment and then looser, and she breathes, and she gazes down through her sights at the terracotta-tiled S-Bahn station lined up in them, fifteen stories below. 

_bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz_

Steel scrapes on cement when she startles. The humming is vibrating up through her backpack – a blandly inoffensive floral pattern, a bulletproof lining – still humming, and she glances desperately between her backpack and the crosshairs – slipped off-centre – and the crosshairs and her backpack; and her satellite phone keeps humming, and she tries to ignore it, as long as she can, but she feels it: the bait she swallowed years ago, digging in and wrenching as Junko jerks the line. 

Her heart feels tight; her hands are sweaty. She wouldn’t _miss_ , if her target stepped out now, but the hit still wouldn’t be as clean as it could be. She needs to get this out the way. She’s not going to be able to concentrate till she gets this out the way. For the sake of her job, she needs to get this out the way. 

Mukuro drags her backpack to her across the concrete roof and she rummages through, one-handed, for the phone. 

“I can’t talk right now,” she says. 

“Bullshit!” says Junko, cheerily, “I just heard you. Long time no _speak_ , big sis!”

“I really can’t,” says Mukuro. 

“I’m pretty sure that was you talking I just _heard_ , Mukuro!” She’s brittle and bright for just a moment till she’s not and she’s woestruck, dipped in sorrow and dripping with it. “Oh, but what if it’s not? – what if I’m losing my _mind_? What a tragedy! What a beauty! So mad, so young! Imagine the _headlines_ , imagine the _grief_ , imagine the sexy desolate photoshoots I could do all bound up in my grimy disgusting cell and my grimy unflattering _straitjacket_ –” 

Her voice rattles down the line, a tinny manic echo of itself. Mukuro props her rifle back between her cheek and shoulder and balances it with one hand, presses the phone to her ear with the other. If she tilts her head – just a little – she can still see down the scope, still keep an eye out for her target, still be ready to shoot when she has to…

“Hey!” snaps Junko, and on the other side of the world Mukuro flinches. “Listen up!”

“Okay,” says Mukuro. 

“Yeah, like I give a fuck if it’s okay by you,” says Junko. “Hey, sis, you know I ain’t callin for the hell of it. Could you do me a teensy-weensy ickle li’l favor?”

Three wide shallow steps lead up to the entrance of the S-Bahn. Mukuro’s still watching, squinting lopsided and awkward down the scope. “Okay,” she says, again. 

Junko is silent, for a moment. Mukuro thinks she can hear voices in the background. “You’re not even gonna check what the ickle li’l favor is before you agree?”

“Oh.” Her feet are slick with sweat when she curls them inside her sneakers. “I didn’t – what is it?”

“God, why do I _ever_ leave it so long before I call you? – it’s the fastest way in the world to remind myself I got the beauty _and_ the brains in this –” 

“Hang on,” says Mukuro, suddenly, and she’s dropped the phone to the concrete beside her before she’s even considered what she’s doing. She seizes the stock of the rifle and steadies it, two-handed, and when she peers down through the scope it’s him: the target on the paperwork she burnt when she received it, in a white shirt unbuttoned at the neck and khaki shorts and buckled sandals, and she slips her finger from the trigger guard to the trigger and tracks him in her crosshairs, tracks him down the first step with his drawstring bag bumping on his back, and the second step with sweat glistening on the pale pink dome of his skull, and the third step and she – the tinny manic strains of Junko’s fury echo up at her – _fires_ , she fires, and he keels but his body hasn’t hit the sidewalk before she’s up and scrabbling for the phone again. 

“Junko?”

She’s there, breathing noisily. Mukuro presses the phone between her ear and her shoulder and begins to rapidly disassemble the rifle, breaking it down and down till it fits in the case she drags out of her backpack and shoves back in. “Junko?” she says, again. “I had a target, I had to take care of it – when he left the building, I mean – I’m on an assignment –”

“Your protestations have been noted,” says Junko, “as have your priorities.”

“I’m on an _assignment_ ,” says Mukuro, urgently, and zips her backpack shut. “Just –” she’s on her feet, “– just tell me what the favor is, I’ll do it for you –” she needs to get away but she’ll need both hands to drop herself from the roof to the fire escape, and she can’t ask Junko to wait, and she switches the phone to her other hand and pulls her backpack on, “– please, Junko, I mean it, I’ll do it right away –”

“Your job comes first. Your family comes last.” Her voice is cold and prim and far away, dulled down the line. “You don’t need to make that desperate racket. Since your mysterious disappearance, you have reordered the things you care about. I understand.”

In the distance Mukuro is aware of screaming, but up here everything fades into the low, continuous grumble of the city and she hurries across the roof with her sneakers pattering out _tack-tack-tack_ on the warm concrete. Junko’s humming one long shrill note. She drops and scrambles to the edge, hangs her feet out over the drop. It’s – three and a half metres to the fire escape, she estimates, though her estimates are so trained they may as well be measurements, and fifteen stories to the shadowed chain-fenced alleyway below. 

She says, “Just a moment,” and jumps. 

The fire escape clatters against the bricks when she lands but she doesn’t stop: she clamps the stumpy aerial of the satellite phone between her teeth and jumps again, over the handrail and down onto the next landing, which clatters and scrapes against the wall with a raucous metallic grinding sound and she leaps out again, leaps down a flight and another flight. The phone tastes like warm sweaty rubber and the dirty palms of her hands and the whole way down she’s trying not to gag on it: she’s trying not to hear the weird echo of Junko’s voice inside her mouth. 

She hits the alley with her weight on both feet. It shudders up through her like an itch in her bones but she springs up and runs, for the shadow of a peeling yellow dumpster with the phone back at her ear. There’s heavy breathing on the other end. “Junko –” 

“Light – of – my – _life_ ,” says Junko, stiffly, and Mukuro knows the exact look for the tone: eyebrows drawn up and pout pushed out, gaze on a distant and terrifying horizon she’s the only who’s ever seen. “Fire – of – my – _loins_.”

“Tell me what you want,” says Mukuro. She presses her back up against the rusted side of the dumpster and slings her backpack round across her front, and gropes inside again, one-handed. “You _know_ I’ll do it.” The skirt she’ll use to blend back in, thin yellow cotton: one-handed she steps into it and hops, loses balance, staggers for a moment then drags it up over her black leggings. She holds her breath in case, in the silence, she hears Junko’s. 

She doesn’t. 

“Anything,” says Mukuro, and she zips her backpack and crosses toward the daylight at the end of the alley. There’s a feeling stewing in her gut like vertigo, like flipping inside out and freefall at the same time, dark and hollow and creeping. It’s been a long time. “Anything, I’ll do anything – I should have called, you should give me your number, I’d – I’d call you whenever you wanted, we could talk, all the time – or –” 

Junko has always dealt with the words for both of them. Even if Mukuro knew what she wanted to say, she wouldn’t have a clue where to start with saying it. “Or – however much you want,” she says, uselessly, and steps out from the deep damp shadows of the alley to the street. The sound of sirens whips and wails round the corners of the high buildings. 

“I want you to buy a copy of German Vogue,” says Junko. 

Mukuro’s heart tightens in relief. “Yes,” she says, at once. 

“You will recognize it because the cover says ‘Vogue’ and I am on it.”

“Yes,” she says. She crosses the sidewalk hurriedly, head down. Her visor cap has a translucent green plastic brim and it casts strange underwater shadows across her face in the bright afternoon sun. 

“That is all.”

“Do you – want me to send it to you? Do you have a copy?”

“That is _all_ ,” says Junko, again. “That is the extent of my desires.”

“Yes,” says Mukuro, immediately, “sorry.”

The automated doors of a grocery store hoosh open as she passes them; cool air comes out. “Been a _lifetime_ since we saw each other last,” says Junko. “Been an _eternity_! Hey – you wanna know something, Muku-chan?” 

“Sure,” says Mukuro, when the rustle of empty static down the line stretches on long enough it starts seeming like maybe Junko wants an answer and not an expectant silence, which is rare. 

“The precise details of your image begin to leave my mind. The contours of your face are lost to me. The nasty shitty color of your eyes is foreign to me as whatever godforsaken rural nightmare you’ve shacked up in.”

“Berlin’s not –”

“You grow stranger to me by the day, little miss stranger.” Her words have gotten soft, and calm, and rhythmic as a lullaby. “I am forced to assume this state of affairs is mutual.”

“I remember you,” says Mukuro, bewildered. She hurries off the main road, down toward the lamppost she chained her bike to; old red brick houses converted to apartments rise up high on the shady tree-lined avenue. “Of _course_ I remember you.”

“Ah,” sighs Junko, “ah – but do you recall the angles of my smile?”

“Yes,” says Mukuro, who does: every single smile, and every single smirk, and every single nasty grin, and every single filed-sharp angle of each of them. 

“The flourish of my hair?”

“Yes,” says Mukuro, who does: sometimes dark and sometimes light and sometimes wigs, and always strange hand-made trimmings that struck her as utterly impractical and Junko as utterly vital. 

“The curves of my body?”

“ _Yes_ ,” says Mukuro, who does: and who is growing more bewildered by the moment. 

“Fuckin pervert,” says Junko, and she cackles to herself. “A girl changes a hell of a lot in two years, sis! And if we’re gonna face facts here – which we really _ought_ to – head on! collision course! plant our feet wide in the middle of the factual superhighway and wait for a _truck_ to hit! – you’ve got to _see_ ,” and Mukuro squats down and swings round her backpack, and fumbles one-handed through the front pocket for the key to her bike chain, “you’re the one who’s missing out here!”

“Sorry?” says Mukuro. She clamps the phone between her ear and shoulder; she twists open the lock. 

“Apology accepted,” says Junko, graciously. “Get Vogue. Remind yourself of my looks. I feel _terrible_ it’s been so long since you saw them – absolutely awful! _Devastated_!”

Mukuro stows the bike chains away inside her backpack, and then she wipes her greasy hands down on her black leggings, one after the other, and wheels the bike across the sidewalk to the road. “I was going to get it anyway,” she says. “You told me to.”

“And now I’m telling you _why_.” Ambulance klaxons shriek through the streets a few blocks over. “Delight in my photos! Relish my shots! Like a cool drink on a hot day, or a death in the family on the day of a wedding – they’re to be _savored_ , sis. Far more of a loss for you to forget my face than vice versa, right?”

“Okay,” says Mukuro. “Um – by the way, what’s your –”

“Kiss kiss!” says Junko, and the line cuts dead. 

“– number,” says Mukuro. It would be a pointless waste of time to look at the silent phone so she doesn’t. She slides the antenna back down; she zips it back away. She’s not disappointed because she’s not surprised, and she’s not surprised because she’s nothing, once Junko gets involved – and Junko’s always involved. 

A _Polizei_ car with its lights whirling bright blue and its sirens howling swoops toward her down the street when she’s cycling, so Mukuro ducks her head till it passes and lets her visor cap conceal her face. She’s no one, and in her line of work it’s better that she stays that way. 

 

**year three**

 

The airplane’s skinny tires aren’t done turning before Junko’s clambered across the barrier and onto the private runway, which she takes at a sprint, hard-heeled boots hammering out on the cracked and dusty concrete. The high hem of her skirt’s flipping with her ass’s every sway; the plane’s slowing, rolling; there’s a bright sudden flash from the scrub behind the chainlink fence at the border of the runway and the confirmation of paparazzi squeezes her heart tight in the unbreakable, unbearable, _ecstatic_ binds of despair – not even a _moment_ alone! not even the bond of _sisterhood_ respected! – and she hollers: “Mukuro! Mukuro-chan!” into air cut through by the rumble and grumble of the plane’s dying engines. 

When it finally dawdles to a halt she’s there beside it, and when a worker from the airport wheels over the stairs she’s there pressing her hands to his arm and cooing, tremulously – “You’ll make sure my sis is safe? My darling big sis? Make sure she’s hale and whole and good as ever?” – and the door slides back with the soft _pop_ of its vacuum seal unsealing, and Mukuro squints round for a moment, briefly sun-blind, before she sees Junko waiting – and she smiles the _tiniest_ smile, miniscule and lopsided and reluctant as a kid forced to choose between unlimited candies and the life of an unloved relative, and it’s _perfect_ – fucking _perfect_! Photogenic to the _extreme_!

“Oh, _Mukuro_ -chan!” cries Junko, and she hurls herself past the attendant and up the stairs toward her, boots ringing out _bam-bam-bam_ on the dimpled steel. “Every day I’ve thought of you! Every night I’ve dreamed of you!”

“Junko,” says Mukuro, in a voice that’s a little lost and a little overwhelmed – more perfect by the _moment_! – and then Junko’s on her with her arms around her and Mukuro’s stiff and weird as she always was, with the hard muscles in her shoulders tense and her back straight and rigid and her hands down at her sides and useless, till Junko tells her what to do with them – “Hug me,” she breathes, into the suntanned curve of her ear, and Mukuro’s dark hair flutters from it and this close Junko sees the way her eyelashes do, too, so she lowers her voice low as it’ll go and speaks on an exhale: “The gaze of the _world_ lies on us, angel!” 

There’s a beat of stillness and then Mukuro does. She’s very warm. Her breath is very even. Junko holds her tighter. 

“Did you miss me?” she whispers. 

Mukuro’s embrace is just as fucking awkward as the rest of her. “Yeah,” she says, after a moment. 

“Mm-hm,” says Junko, and then she presses her face to the pale angle between Mukuro’s neck and shoulder and her hair – mainly blonde today, thick and wild and mildly pink – falls around her in a faultless curtain. “Right answer!” 

Mukuro huffs a quiet laugh but her laughs always sound _so_ fake, and her hands on Junko’s back are still _so_ clumsy, and halfway up the airplane stairs the breeze is still _so_ ineffectual: and so slowly, deliberately, Junko runs her tongue down the soft line of her collarbone. 

“Ah –” says Mukuro, and her grip tightens and digs in hard. 

“Mm-hm,” says Junko, again, and licks her way back in the other direction. “My _darling_ – my stupid _darling_ –”

“Ikusaba-san,” says a flight assistant, framed and anxious in the doorway behind Mukuro, and Mukuro doesn’t flinch but Mukuro’s _never_ flinched – not if Junko drops icecubes down Mukuro’s shirt! not if Junko tweezes out Mukuro’s eyelashes in her sleep! not if Junko huskily lists off all the despairing ways Mukuro could die while Mukuro has her head obediently, dutifully down between Junko’s legs! – and Junko slides her hands down from Mukuro’s shoulderblades to her waist and looks up sweetly through six sticky layers of blackest black mascara to meet the flight assistant’s gaze. “Enoshima-san – if you wouldn’t mind clearing the stairs –”

\----

“Okay,” says Junko, high and sing-song, and when she takes Mukuro’s hands in hers the cool blank space Mukuro has trained herself to think in crashes in a burst of static. She’s aware of the distance between the plane and the small squat office at the edge of the runway, and of the time it would take her to sprint between them, and of the dark figures crouching beyond the fence with cameras and flashbulbs and long-range lenses, and of the light wind and the weak sun and the effect they’d have on her aim if she needed to shoot but mainly she’s aware of her body: of her body below Junko’s hands, and the way her skin feels thin where Junko touches. “ _Shall_ we?” says Junko, and Mukuro’s dizzy with impact. 

“Shall we – what?”

“They want us to move,” says Junko, still light, still sweet, so soft. “Whaddaya think, Muku-chan?”

“It’s,” says Mukuro, and she glances back at the flight assistant, who is pressing stray windblown hairs down into her bun, and then she glances back at Junko, who is standing one stair below her in heels high enough there’s hardly a height difference, and smiling, an innocuous, insipid smile. “It’s – I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“You don’t _know_?”

“No,” says Mukuro. She isn’t panicked but she isn’t calm; her heartrate hasn’t risen but she can feel it, everywhere Junko’s laid hands. Outside the office, behind the barrier, stand adults: based on the facts she suspects they’re their parents. 

“You’re acting kinda _awfully_ fucking strange,” says Junko. 

“Okay,” says Mukuro. What she wants to say is _let’s just leave_ , but then she looks into Junko’s wide round iris-enhancing sapphire contacts and she can’t even _want_ to leave: she can’t even remember how to want something Junko hasn’t told her to want. 

“Well,” says Junko, and her voice is still some strange un-nutritious concoction of sugar and air, “how’s about _I_ say we go?”

“Sure,” says Mukuro. She thinks, maybe, she should say something else – she suspects that maybe she was _about_ to – but then Junko squeezes Mukuro’s hand in hers, and tugs her down a step, and Mukuro follows her helplessly across the single dry tarmac runway to the little office constructed at its side. The last time she was on a private plane she parachuted out of it into a rocky scrub-covered field at the base of the French Pyrénées and spent the next three days hiking cross-country to her assigned meeting point, in the mist and clouds of the Spanish border. She knew what she was doing then. She doesn’t anymore. 

“Welcome home,” says their father. 

“It’s been a long time,” says their mother. 

Mukuro nods. There isn’t much else to say. They’re both dressed in formal black. Junko never did tell her if they’d mourned her, when she disappeared. 

“You can go on without us,” Junko says graciously, and she wraps her arm round Mukuro’s shoulders and squeezes, tight. “I’ll call us a taxi, I’ll charge it to you. We sisters have _so_ much catching up to get on with!”

“Is that what you want, Mukuro?”

“Um,” says Mukuro, and she doesn’t look at her father but watches as Junko’s gaze slides sideways and tracks from her brutally practical crop down to the round-neck collar of her grey cotton t-shirt – and Mukuro finds she’s wishing she’d called, before she left, in case Junko wanted her in something specific for their reunion – from the belted waist of her cargo pants to her muddy, dusty, cracked-leather sneakers – even though she _knows_ that’s stupid, because Junko never gave her a number to reach her on – just Junko with Mukuro’s number, for three years, calling whenever she wanted and _only_ whenever she wanted – “it’s – yes. Yeah. I’ll go with Junko.”

Once their parents’ car has pulled out and away from the parking lot with a choked-up grumble of exhaust Junko slams the door of the airport office behind them and pushes Mukuro to the wall so hard a hanging calendar behind her dislodges and falls and crumples on the carpet, and she kisses her. It’s wet and filthy and she tastes like toothpaste. 

The last time Mukuro was hit by dizzy weakness so debilitating she was waistdeep in mud at the edge of a river in the Tropics sweating out a bad-water fever, motionless in wait with a bushknife in her hand. She was in control of herself then. She thinks that maybe she isn’t, anymore. She kisses back.

**Author's Note:**

> (if strange and nasty murder-kids are your scene, do [come hit me up](http://www.komaedakomaeda.tumblr.com/)! they're my favourite thing, i cannot get enough)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Destroy Everything You Touch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/874166) by [LordAxxington](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LordAxxington/pseuds/LordAxxington)




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